


far away, long ago

by christmasinmarch



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux, Phantom - Susan Kay, Phantom of the Opera - Lloyd Webber
Genre: Amnesia, I have no idea what I'm doing, If You Squint - Freeform, Inspired by Anastasia (1997 & Broadway), Light Angst, Medical Inaccuracies, Multi, a little megstine, at least i hope so, lots of fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:01:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29784090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/christmasinmarch/pseuds/christmasinmarch
Summary: In a world where Meg Giry is no longer employed at the Palais Garnier, she must do what it takes to survive. Even if that means joining forces with the former Opera Ghost in order to teach an amnesiac how to impersonate the missing Vicomtesse De Chagny.
Relationships: Christine Daaé & Erik | Phantom of the Opera, Christine Daaé & Meg Giry, Christine Daaé/Erik | Phantom of the Opera, Erik | Phantom of the Opera & Meg Giry, Raoul de Chagny/Christine Daaé
Kudos: 4





	1. in which meg loses something

“Meg! Tell us another!” The ballet girls were seated on the ground of their dormitories in a circle, clamoring to hear more tales about the resident ghost. While most workers at the Palais Garnier had the good sense to not believe in such a thing, the dancers were younger than most, and therefore prone to a certain naïveté. The tales they exchanged ranged from witty, silly poltergeists, to malevolent spirits. Somehow, the stories they told would always end up being centered around one phantom in particular.

The Opera Ghost. 

“Alright, alright,” The light haired dancer conceded after a pause, shushing her friends. As the only member of the corps de ballet to have ever seen the alleged “opera ghost, she was constantly being asked to describe him to the others. While Meg Giry would have preferred to talk about other things, she still greatly enjoyed being able to frighten her friends. She’d always been a good storyteller, and with her penchant for the supernatural, she was quite popular among the corps. 

“The first time I’d ever seen the ghost was years ago. I must have been no older than Little Jammes, and I had just finished rehearsals. There I was, standing by the stage, when I heard him.” She paused here, wanting to build suspense.The sparse lighting in the room, provided by a few candles, illuminated her face in such a way that Meg herself seemed ghostly. “The sound came from every direction, and I wondered if I’d gone mad.”

“What did you hear?” one girl asked, leaning in closer, all wide eyes and wild curls. 

“He’d been playing a song—it was on the violin, I believe. It was unlike anything I’d ever heard before! I was confused, but I figured it must have been someone in the pit. Looking back on that day, I should have known that the music I was hearing was far too strange for it to have come from any normal violinist. I’d decided to not further investigate, and I had been just ready to leave...But then, I saw it.” Gasps sounded out amongst the group. 

“Up in box 5, there was a shadow!” No matter how many times she recounted these events, the looks of terror upon her friend’s faces would never fail to amuse Meg. “There was no doubt in my mind that it was him I had seen.”

“If you saw the ghost, what did he look like?” The girls turned around to see Sorelli standing in the doorway. As the prima ballerina, she was older than the other ballet rats, meaning Meg’s ghost stories were mere amusements to her, and nothing more. Still, she saw no harm in indulging their childish fantasies from time to time.

“He’s tall! Taller than anyone I’ve ever seen. He dresses like any normal gentleman, with his hat and dress-coat, but he’s skeletally thin.”

“You might have seen a patron,” Sorelli pointed out. She walked towards the others, and sat down beside them gracefully, deigning to listen in on their gathering.

“Well, I thought the same thing! That is...until I saw his eyes! They’re the strangest yellow color, and they glow, like a cat’s! I do not believe that I will soon forget those eyes...” Her voice trailed off. 

More gasps (and a few shrieks from the more faint of heart,) were exchanged in reaction. A smile spread across Meg’s face. It really didn’t take much effort to scare the dancers.

“That’s not true!” Another girl, Christine Daaé, spoke. “The ghost isn’t real.”

Meg resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She was no fun, that Daaé girl. Always alone, always praying—Her eyes were far too somber and tired for someone so young. Honestly, it was a shock the 

“Oh, but he is! He might be listening to us as we speak!” Giggles and squeals filled the air.

It was a time that had long since passed. Things had changed, and now there was no space for ghost stories in Meg Giry’s life. It was no longer her world, and she was forced to remember that fact every time she walked past the charred ruins of what had once been the Palais Garnier. Everything she’d ever known was gone, burned to the ground in a matter of minutes. 

She missed all of it. Every one of Carlotta’s famous tantrums, every petty argument she’d had with Cecile, every blister from her pointe shoes. What she wouldn’t give to see the prima donna threaten to quit for the umpteenth time!

The last year or so of her life had been dreadfully bleak. With no education aside from the training in ballet, work was scarce. She scraped by, but only barely so. With so little money, there was no way she’d be able to wait for the reconstruction of the Palais to start working again. She’d found it wisest to abandon dance entirely, instead becoming maid to the Comte De Chagny. It felt as though it had been months since she’d said anything that wasn’t a “yes, sir” or “no, sir”. She could count the amount of times she’d smiled on one hand.

She probably looked just like little Christine Daaé now, with her too-empty eyes, and her constant praying for the life that had been—the one that never would be again.

Really, she knew she ought to be grateful for the life she led. The De Chagnys were kind, and there were certainly worse places for her to work. In all honesty, this position was more secure than the one she’d held at the Palais. Yet...with every day she spent away from the stage, she felt her soul tearing itself apart, every bit of the identity she’d help slipping away. She wasn’t herself anymore.

The real Meg Giry had died with the opera house.


	2. money, money, money (or, in which meg finds something)

Working for the Comte meant that Meg had seen his younger brother far too many times to properly keep track of. Even when she was a dancer, he’d frequented the opera, along with his brother, so she was more than familiar with the young Vicomte. 

In all the time she’d known Raoul, however, she’d never seen his wife. To be quite truthful, Meg had only heard of her in passing, so it came as a complete shock to her to learn the Vicomtesse De Chagny had gone missing. In fact, she’d been missing for nearly three months already, and she was only hearing of it now. 

Nothing had turned up, from what Meg had heard. Police searched far and wide (or so they said), but it was as though the noblewoman had just vanished without a trace.

With no sign of the Vicomtesse anywhere, Raoul became more and more frantic in his search, and at last decided to provide a reward for anyone who would be able to bring her back safe and sound. 

Despite never considering herself to be particularly greedy, Meg wasn’t stupid. She knew that with the amount of money he was offering, she’d be able to take off to Montpelier and audition for the Opera Comedie. 

And thus began her search.

Whenever she had time to, she’d ask around, desperate for any information anyone had to offer. It was funny how quickly people started caring when there was money involved. It was funny how quickly she started caring when there was money involved. 

She thought that maybe it made her a bad person to act this way, and thinking about that hurt a little. Meg pushed the feeling down, though. Her mother wasn’t around anymore, gone in the fire just like everything else she’d ever cared about, and no one else would want to hear her childish ramblings besides.

“Are you sure you don’t know anything about the Vicomtesse?” she’d asked Mathis, the cook one day. He was stirring a pot of something she couldn’t see, his too-long, light hair threatening to dip into the food.

“Even if I did, why would I tell you?” he asked, turning around to face her. 

“Because you want to see her safe and sound again?” she tried, knowing full well that neither of them cared about the noblewoman’s wellbeing. For that, he spared her a dry laugh that was really more of a cough.

“You’re on your own here. Besides, you don’t seem like you’d be a great detective.”

He was right, of course, but the words stung nonetheless. He’d never liked her, though Meg didn’t have a clue as to why. She frowned indignantly, silently hoping his hair would fall into the pot.

“I’d split the reward with you,” An obvious lie, but Mathis said nothing in response as Meg walked away, dejected.

After a few days of operating in this fashion, Meg was able to learn a few things about Raoul’s wife. For one, she had brown hair, and was of Swedish heritage. Though it wasn’t much, it was a good start, she supposed. Having a vague idea of what the missing girl looked like made her search slightly easier, even if the description she was provided with was very vague. 

Aside from the little information she had access to, she had nothing to go off of. It very nearly seemed impossible to go about looking for the girl. In fact, this sudden disappearance was far too convenient.

It was almost as though someone didn’t want her to be found. Or, as though she herself didn’t want to be found.

Meg shook her head to clear the thought. While she’d never met the Vicomtesse, it didn’t seem plausible that the woman would have amassed any enemies, seeing as barely anyone even knew who she was.

Outside of the one she’d recently married into, she seemed to have no family to speak of. Aside from Raoul, no one was too upset by her loss. It seemed the other De Chagnys weren’t too well-acquainted with the woman. 

Between working all day, and her desperate search for the Vicomtesse De Chagny, her short walk to the market was the only time she truly had to herself nowadays. She relished in the small freedom it gave her, humming a tune she didn’t really remember. 

Much to her annoyance, the streets were crowded, more so than usual. On what was already a warm day, the hundreds of people seemed to only add to the temperature, making the weather even worse. She wasn’t too eager to spend more time in the heat than she had to, and so she took a turn halfway down the road. It wasn’t as though she was in a rush to get to the shops, after all, and adding a few minutes to her journey sounded far more pleasant than staying in the scorching heat another second. The street was practically deserted. While it was located in what seemed to be a seedier looking area, she found she didn’t mind, enjoying the peace and quiet this alternate route offered her.

She’d scarcely been walking for ten minutes when she paused all of a sudden. Meg screwed her eyes shut, hoping to blink away what she’d just seen. 

She’d always been a little touched in that way, or so she’d been told. In fact, Carlotta had once screamed it at her when she’d finally had enough of her dumb ghost stories. She remembered the words the same way a tree remembers being chopped down, but she pushed feeling that down too. It was better that way, except for the fact that Meg had pushed down so much she thought she just might burst. Shaking her head as if to dispel the increasingly maddening train of thought, she refocused her attention on what (or rather who) had caught her attention in the first place.

There, in the alleyway was a woman lying facedown on the ground. From a distance, it was hard to tell whether she was alive or not. Meg would have been inclined to leave her alone, were it not for the oddly familiar chestnut shade of her hair. Something in the back of her mind told her that this was worth investigating.

Approaching her, Meg frowned. Now that she was closer to the lady’s passed-out form, she found a gash on her head. The blonde brushed her hair aside to better assess the damage. The half-dried blood made her matted dark brown locks sticky to the touch. Perhaps she was dead, after all, she hadn’t shown a single sign of consciousness insofar. Just as she was about to give up and go about her day, Meg thought to check for a pulse. Reaching for the unconscious girl’s wrist, she felt the beating of her heart.

Relief washed over her.

Her face was one Meg recognized, although she couldn’t put a finger on why. As carefully as she could, she flipped the girl over, trying her best to support her injured head. Her delicate features and brown hair were in the back of Meg’s mind, just like the song she’d been humming earlier, the one she didn’t quite know the melody of. After a few minutes of studying the girl’s face, she stirred. 

The woman’s eyes fluttered open. Her pupils were dilated. Meg knew very little of medicine, but she certainly knew enough to understand that wasn’t good. Despite all of that, Meg would recognize the empty, dead look in the girl’s dull green eyes anywhere.

Christine Daaé.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure how good my writing is so far, but I am having fun! (that's what matters, right?)

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written fanfic since high school (and I've never published anything) but this plot idea's been floating around in my head for a while, and I just had to write it down! I'm really excited to start writing again!


End file.
